Today we talked with Dr. Novick who gave us more perspective on the Argentinian healthcare system. He highlighted the problems within the system and reinforced what we learned throughout the trip. Dr. Novick is the head of Swiss Medical, one of the largest private insurance companies in Argentina, which provided insight of the changing healthcare system. Due to recent political changes by President Milei, the landscape of healthcare has changed. Previously, unions had an almost monopsony on insurance, which made it easier for them to negotiate better terms for there members. While this is good, there was a lot of corruption in some of the unions and for over 60 years union executives would steal money from their members. Milei made it able for people to directly pay for private insurance instead of going through an intermediary, a union. In effect, smaller, corrupt unions have been in the decline since the policy change. However, we will not know the long term effects of this policy and whether or not unions as a whole will lose power all together. With this new policy, Argentina is moving closer to becoming similar to the United States Healthcare system.

We also visited the Evita Museum, which celebrated her life in service of Argentina. We took a guided tour of one of the houses owned by Evita’s Foundation for women, which served as shelter for young women who needed food and education. It was turned into a museum after Evita’s death, containing some clothing from her wardrobe of her life and a recreation of what the house looked like during her life. The museum contained replicas of her personal documents including the ones she used to vote. Evita was an influential political leader in Argentinian history, an was a pivotal figure in women’s suffrage in the mid 20th century. While she was loved by the nation as the first lady, she refused to accept a vice president position due to her illness. At 33 years old she died of cancer, with the whole country mourning her death for 2 weeks and celebrating her life.